HAPPY EASTERN - Egg Liqueur Cookies Linzer Style

These sandwich style cookies look like flowers and have a little flower cut-out that is filled with a yellow egg liqueur cream. Even though cookies is more something for Christmas time, I found this recipe on one of the blogs I am following (Patce's Patisserie) as last year's Easter recipe, and I thought them fitting.

The sweet short crust pastry made with flour, almonds, sugar, egg and lemon zest used for these cookies is called a "Linzer short crust pastry" that orginially was used for the "Linzer Eye" cookie, a Christmas cookie with two sandwich style cookie discs filled with jam and with three little cut-out holes on top. These cookies originated in the small town Linz in Austria in the early 1700s. I will be using a flower cut-out instead of the three holes and instead of red jam, I will fill them with a yellow egg liqueur (or a yellow jam as non-alcoholic version), fitting to spring and Eastern.

Preparation:

Preheat oven at 180 degree C (350 degree F).

Prepare the short pastry. Mix together butter, powdered sugar, salt, lemon peel and egg. In a separate bowl, mix flour and corn starch. Add the flour/cornstarch mix and the almonds to the butter mix and knead together to a pastry dough. Wrap the dough in plastic and chill for about 30 minutes. Please use blanched almonds as it makes the pastry lighter. Unblanched almonds would result in brown cookies, not white ones.

Roll the pastry dough on a floured surface (ca. 3mm thick). Put plastic wrap on top of the dough and it rolls easier. My cookie cutter was flower shaped and had a smaller flower as the cut-out. It had the option to remove the inner cut out, so that I could make both, the botton part of the cookie without a cut-out as well as the top part with the cut-out. Now, cut out as many flower cookies without a cut-out as with a cut-out. Place the flower cookies on a baking tray lined with parchment paper. If the unbaked cookies seem soft, put them in the fridge and let them chill for about 10 minutes. This will prevent that they are spreading during baking. Bake the cookies in a preheated oven at 180 degree celsius for about 8-10 minutes. Be careful that the cookies don't brown. Take them out of the oven and let them cool.

For the egg liqueur topping, mix together the egg liqueur and powdered sugar. Spread a thin layer of the egg liqueur on top of the flower cookies without the cut-out. Alternatively, use the yellow jam for a non-alcoholic version. Those will be the bottom of the sandwich cookie. For Christmas time, you would now dust the top part (the cookie with the cut-out) with powdered sugar. This is optional, but I noticed that for Eastern it looks better not to dust them. Assemble the cookies as sandwiches, the cut-outs facing up. Add a little bit more of the egg liqueur topping in the cut-out holes.

These cookies will soften when stored. Keep them in an airtight container in the refrigerator or serve the day of cooking.